So I have an iPhone and have been using it for a while with my GMail account, but had to do my Contacts and Calendar in two separate places. This was starting to get a bit of a pain. So I looked around for something, there must be a iPhone App that will sort this out. Well they do sell an application called MobileMe that costs money, why can’t this be free.

One day while looking at my Google Calendar I saw a tip that read “Sync Google Calendar with you iPhone. Learn more” so I followed the link. This is great, you not only get your Email, but all your contacts and calendar functions. It’s FREE too!!!

You will need to setup your GMail account differently, if you’ve already got it installed on your iPhone, but it’s easy. Follow these instructions: Click Here

You will then need to follow these instructions to get you Calendar & Contacts to sync with you iPhone. Follow these instructions: Click Here

The one thing that I found when I got my iPhone was that you could not use loaded music as your Ringtones. So, the first thing I did was to look around the internet for a method or means of doing this. Of course I find that people have written applications that will do the job for you but are going to charge you to download their software and use it. So I thought, lets go back and look at iTunes and see what can be done. After a little playing about I found that I could create a iPhone ringtone from any non DRM track in my music collection. Here is how to go about it:

Open iTunes (if you don’t have it get it from here) and select and music track which does not had DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Right Mouse click and select Get Info.

Select the Options tab across the stop.

On this screen you need to select the start and end time for the Ringtone, remember it can only be a maximum of 30 seconds. If you wish to take it from the start them just tick the end box and enter 30 in the second’s box.
Now press OK.

Right Mouse click the Song Entry and select Create AAC Version from the menu. You will now see a new entry for the song you selected and it’s time length should match what you typed in, 30 seconds?!?

Right Mouse click on the Original Song entry and click on Get Info. Select Options from the Tabs. Un-tick the Start and End times for your song (else next time you sync you will get a short song).

Browse to where iTunes stores its Music normally: C:\Users\Matt\Music\iTunes Media (just browse to the name of your login name) and create a New Folder called Ringtones (once created you will not need to do this step again).

Look in the folder C:\Users\Matt\Music\iTunes Media\Music\<artist>\<album> and Cut the newly created file and Paste it into C:\Users\Matt\Music\iTunes Media\Ringtones your new Folder where you will keep all your new Ringtones.

This file will have a track name like <track name>.m4a Windows recognises the file type by the extension so .M4A is iTunes Music file and .M4R is iTunes Ringtone. So you now need to Rename the file to <track name>.m4r

Back in iTunes delete the 30 second entry of the new duplicate track from iTunes.

Back to the Folder where you copied the track to, double click on the file and it will be added to iTunes under the Ringtone section on the left hand menu.